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Comment by ramblenode | Hacker News Reader

The people I know who use desktop Linux love their Linux rigs a whole lot more than my Windows and Mac acquaintances enjoy their computers--which in many cases just borders on tolerance, especially with Windows 10. Maybe software needs something beyond market share, sort of like what Bhutan did with Gross National Happiness. We'll rank products based on how much people enjoy them and then see who's the dominant desktop.

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I enjoy having a machine that ultimately I control. You just can't get the same level of control with Windows, Mac, Android or iPhone. You constantly have to wrestle your wants with the wants of the platform venders.

A key area where this is most apparent these days is privacy. If you want privacy you have to keep a really close eye on Microsoft, Apple and Google every update.

With a Linux Server/Desktop I'm free from their power games.

Do you trust everyone who contributes to, reviews, and maintains the package management infrastructure you use?

Do you ever find the feeling of control challenged when you want to upgrade an application you use without upgrading the entire OS in lockstep, or vice versa?

I'm confident the distribution I use isn't trying to collect, catalogue and sell my private info, or lock me into a service or product. So far it doesn't interfere with what I want in any way.

So yes I trust my distribution.

Part of that comes from the sense of ownership and the love that a tinkerer has for their projects. Not that it's a bad thing, but I think it's easy to see how that love would arrive.

That's because it takes more work and knowledge to get a Linux machine running smoothly, so in the end you feel a sense of accomplishment, when in the end all that was done was just getting a local desktop OS running the way a computer should be used in the first place. It's all smoke and mirrors.

That's the whole point. You can't achieve this with windows, because it runs an update whenever it wants and will just give you a restart at a random time. Happened to me at work during a presentation when i turned on a vm after few days. And then you have same privacy settings scattered around the OS trying to scam you into giving your data to Microsoft, which turns on by default after every godamn update. I would have never moved to linux, if microsoft didn't shove their crap down the users throats everytime it updates.

I have now complete control over everything, and i feel very happy by using a fedora workstation on my personal pc/laptop. I am not into gaming, and even if i were, i would rather sacrifice my windows games just to support an OS which is more fair to the users and doesn't steal their privacy.

That might be true for some users, who are into the tweaking. But I don't think "OS as a challenge" characterises Linux users generally.

All my Ubuntu laptop installs have been pretty much plug-n-play, and I leave out the "last 1%" like installing 3rd party drivers for the fingerprint reader. Last time I spent effort was when setting up dual boot on a Macbook, and all the effort was on the macOS sids, shrinking encrypted partitions using the CLI tools etc.

(Of course I research Ubuntu compatibility beforehand and select the laptop based on that)

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